Diplomatist Magazine Diplomatist October 2019

LATIN AMERICAN CORNER found their budgets slashed, leaving them barely able to function. Bolsorano has had a long-standing anti-indigenous and racist mindset, suggesting that Brazil should now allow ‘one centimetre [to be] demarcated for indigenous reserves or quilombolas’. Bolsorano though is though only paying back those that helped to get him into power. His campaign was heavily funded by Brazil’s hugely powerful agribusiness, who saw in the new president a man who would bend to their will. And it would seem they were right, Bolsorano has already lifted bans on a huge array of pesticides, with little debate or scientiﬁ c evidence of their safety. Some reports suggest 500 million bees have died this year along as a result. For all the bravado, Bolsorano is just a puppet of the powerful global agricultural lobby. Cheering from the sidelines While we must place a huge amount of blame at the feet of the Brazilian government, and especially Bolsorano, this is an overly simpliﬁ ed version of the world. The agribusiness lobby that got him to power and his policies of environmental destruction and indigenous genocide are fueled by free trade agreements, political back-slapping, climate change denial and a global shift to the political right. China, the US and the EU all have numerous trade agreements in place, or on the table, all of which are part of the process of burning the Amazon. In September this year, the US and Brazil agreed to promote private-sector development in the Amazon. Brazil has claimed that the $100m investment in opening up the Amazon to economic development is the only way to safeguard the region. Critics though have claimed that this is really a cover story for opening the region to more mining, logging and farming. Even small roads through the region will bring more settlers who clear forest. In the EU, Finland called for European countries to consider stopping imports of soybeans and beef from Brazil until environmental protections were in place. Yet, the EU remains brazils second largest trading partner, and this call was presented against a backdrop of the European Commission signing an agreement with the Mercosur states that would see the removal of numerous trade barriers, increasing imports of beef, chicken, sugar and ethanol from the region, all of which will create increased production in Brazil, putting additional pressures on the Amazon, and fueling Bolsorano’s slash and burn economics. 41 percent of EU beef already comes from Brazil. The ﬁ res in the Amazon and the supporting of Brazils political position on the issue makes a mockery of the EC claim that the Mercosur agreement will promote ‘sustainable development’. And while French President Emmanual Macron was publicly applauded for calling the Amazon ﬁ res an ‘international crisis’, at no point did he or other EU nations suggest reexamining the Mercoser-EU agreement. A new report entitled ‘Complicity in Destruction’ produced by Amazon Watch and Apid (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil) has also found signiﬁ cant links between EU, US and Canadian companies and illegal deforestation. 56 Brazilian companies who have been ﬁ ned for illegal activities in the Amazon have been liked to EU and North American companies. The report also found ﬁ nancial connections between dozens of top-tier international ﬁ nancial institutions and companies complicit in the destruction of the Amazon. The Amazon has always been exploited, and much of this by rich corporations in the northern hemisphere. Many see Bolsorano’s policies as a right to sovereignty, and certainly the Strongman political image the president has painted of himself plays into this. This is beyond an issue of nationalism though, losing the Amazon though would be catastrophic for all human life. The forest is home to three million native plants and animals and is a huge carbon sink. If we continue at this rate WWF suggests 55 percent of the forest will be destroyed or severely damaged by 2030, this will dramatically reduce its ability to pull planet-warming greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, drastically speeding up climate change. The world is already changing faster than predicted by the UNs Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change in 2014. We must call to account nationalistic, climate change denying governments, like Bolsorano’s or Trumps, and moreover, we must deconstruct the free trade agreements that quietly prop up these regimes as our politicians publicly denounce them. The ﬁ res in the Amazon are no accident, they were started by Bolsorano, but they are fanned by the winds of capitalism and free trade.  * Author is Senior Lecturer at Westminster School of Media and Communication department, University of Westminster 42 • Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 7 • Issue 10 • October 2019, Noida

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